Say that a person steals a lot of money and hides it somewhere, however the person does get eventually arrested and gets 5 or 10 years in prison, but the money never gets found, 5 or 10 years later the thief gets out of the prison and gets to the money and what happens then? Would he be arrested again if police caught him spending that money or would he be free to spend it, since he already spent time in prison?
Also not really related, but how about this, everyone in their lives found at least some little money on the street that fell out of someones pocket, usually less than 10 dollars and of course police wouldn’t harass you for that, but what would happen in a identical situation, but with a lot more money, 10000 dollars or more, so basically money that you ,found somewhere", but money that you didn’t earn or receive from someone, can you use it legally to buy stuff or not? And if not, imagine that the same money you found was hidden somewhere in a new house you bought or something like that, so basically some kind of property that you own and you find the money, does it then belong to you?
If they found the money, it would be taken away, and if they didn’t find it, I’m sure he’d be followed from the time he left prison until he led them to the money.
In Australia, somebody bought a chest or somthing with $100,000 in it for $2. The money wasn’t theirs, as "They paid for the chest; they didn’t pay for the $100,000’. So I’m guessing it must be illegal to sell money for less than face value or something?
A lot of jurisdictions have a limit–say $100–on money found in the street. If it’s over a certain amount, you’re supposed to turn it over to the police. If nobody claims it in a year, you might get it back.
The prison sentence is “payment” for committing the crime. But it doesn’t entitle you to the money you received for the crime. That still belongs to its rightful owner.
So let’s say you robbed a bank, hid the money, got caught, went to prison, got out, and then started spending the hidden money. The police would come along and confiscate the money and give it back to the bank, which is the legal owner. But you wouldn’t be charged with a crime because you have already been charged with bank robbery and served your sentence.
Are you suggesting that cooperation and intelligence are mutually exclusive? If that were true, I’d expect to see a negative correlation between intelligence and altruism. But the reverse seems to be true. Even if we replace “intelligent” with “logical”, I’d point out that, in the 1980s, Douglas Hofstadter organized a computer simulation of the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, which found that the most successful strategies were the ones that spent most of their time cooperating. Human beings are just one of many species which exhibit this kind of behavior, where individuals make decisions based on what’s good for the group rather than what’s good only for themselves. If this was a flawed strategy, natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. But it persists. And this explains why humans have empathy. Perhaps you meant to say “did you hear about the sociopath who found a suitcase…”
I’d rather live in a world where lost property gets returned than live in a world where I personally get extra cash while constantly worrying about avoiding suspicion.
Getting back to the OP, I’ve heard of cases where the courts offered a lighter sentence if the criminal returned the money, which seems to imply that they’d be allowed to keep it if they opted for the harsher sentence. OTOH, I’ve heard of people being reunited with stolen heirlooms decades after a theft, even when the current possessor was several steps removed from the original crime.
Yes it’s illegal to keep money/stuff that you find. There’s even a name for the crime: Theft by finding.
Always surprises me a little that I’m apparently the only person in the world that knows about this, considering that it’s on the law books in some form or another in most of the countries of the world.
In New York City, the police department is still conducting a sting operation called “Operation Lucky Bag” (although the procedures have been changed from when it first began). They leave wallets, purses, backpacks, and other valuables in public places (streets, stores, subway stations, and so on). Then plain clothes officers wait nearby and wait for someone to pick up the valuables.
They also position a uniformed officer nearby. If the suspect goes directly to the officer and turns over the valuables, they only get frisked and have their IDs run. If they go in the opposite direction or pass the officer, they get arrested by the plain clothes cops.
That article is from 2007 and makes it clear that the practice was being questioned and that some of the cases had been dismissed, so maybe it’s no longer being done.
IIRC, you can’t be charged with possession of stolen goods for having the money you stole, unless the cash was clearly marked as to its source. “Where else would it come from?” is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and you don’t have to say anything about its source (right to remain silent). But the income tax angle is a good possible way to nail the holder of the cash - but you’d have to wait, I guess, until April 15th to be sure they are evading taxes.
Thefy by finding - Seriously? Cases involve “found a sovereign” (what, 21 shillings?) Some pretty petty cases, back when theft was a serious charge.
(There’s the joke when the new pound coin came out, it should be called a “Thatcher”. It’s thick and brassy and thinks it’s a sovereign.)
That would only cover items legally possessed by the previous owners. If they hid stolen money or loot in the house it still has to go back to the true owners.
I’m not a lawyer but I’m wondering if I could beat that charge. New York law says that you can be charged with theft if you find lost property and keep it “without taking reasonable measures to return such property to the owner”.
Now handing it over to a nearby police officer is one reasonable measure. But suppose I worry that the police officer might just pocket the money himself and not report it. So I decide to bring the lost property to a police station where there are supervisors watching things and I feel more confident that the police will follow the right procedures.
This is what I would do in a store if I found a wallet. I would take it to the service desk rather than hand it to the first employee I see.
You’re right and I should have addressed that point. My hypothetical bank robber couldn’t be charged with theft because he has already been convicted of that crime. But knowing possession of stolen property is often a separate crime by itself.
I described how it worked in the beginning. That resulted in numerous lawsuits. As of 2014 (the latest I could find), the sting was still in operation but the guidelines for making an arrest had changed: